I want to share a lesson about prayer that I learned centered around Philippians 4:5b-7. It says, "“The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
BACKGROUND: If you have an automatic garage door opener you may know how it feels to have it stop when it is going up because of an overload. For a month mine had been sticking with increasing frequency until five weeks ago as I was leaving for my early morning men's group that meets in downtown St. Paul. It took more than ten cycles of pushing the up-down button on the remote control to finally get the door open so I could get the car out.
When I arrived to the men's group, one of the guys asked us if it was a sin to be anxious or worry. The verse from Philippians came to mind and we discussed the passage line by line: "The Lord is near" – he knows about all of our problems and is close whenever we need help – that included my garage door. "Do not be anxious about anything" – With every problem we don't have to know where to begin to solve it, there are two choices – present it to God with prayer and thanksgiving or we can be anxious. If we present it to God, the Apostle Paul promises us that the supernatural peace of God which is beyond our ability to understand will protect our hearts and minds.
After reading and discussing this passage, I gave my problem with the garage door to God in prayer. Immediately, I was at peace and soon had a couple of ideas of what to do. However, when I returned home, the garage door worked fine, and continued to work fine. The next week when I shared this story with our Sunday morning “Life Transformation” class, a member told me to spray it with WD-40 if it happened again, so I had an easy solution that worked to solve the problem.
So, once I handed the problem to God, I received: divine peace,a supernatural solution, and finally, wise counsel on how to fix the problem in the natural realm.
What I learned is that when we have problems, no matter how small and inconsequential they may seem, we always have two choices: to turn away from God and worry, or to turn to God in PRAYER and receive a solution to the external problem and/or an internal peace to face the problem. That is the promise in Philippians.
Recall the lyrics of Scott Krippayne’s Storm Song, “Sometimes He Calms The Storm, And other times He calms His child..."